The Regents ELA Exam: Tips For Part 1 of the Regents ELA Exam - Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension

What Does This Part of the Exam Require?
This part of the exam requires close reading of three texts and will contain at least one prose literature passage, usually from a work of fiction; a poem; and one informational text, which may include a personal narrative, a speech, an account of historical significance, or a discussion of a scientific concept. The prose passages and the poems are sometimes works in translation. These passages are followed by a total of 24 multiple-choice questions. The questions require analysis of different aspects of a text, including: elements of character and plot development, comprehension of a central idea and how it is supported, elements of style, and understanding vocabulary in context.Most of the questions include more than one plausible answer; choosing the correct answer often requires comprehension of the text as a whole.

Strategies and Review
- Remember, close reading means reading to understand what the text says and means as well as to recognize how the meaning is constructed and revealed.
- Be sure to first read through to the end of the passage before trying to answer any of the questions.
- Make your choice of the best answer based on the meaning of the entire passage; there may be more than one plausible choice.
- Recognize the key terms commonly used in the multiple-choice questions.
- Review the Glossaries to support your knowledge and use of literary terms and writing strategies.
- Be confident that the reading, discussion, and writing in your high school courses have prepared you for the exam.
- Review the actual Regents ELA Exams and the Answers Explained.
- Review the tasks based on a poem in the Regents ELA/exams in the Answers Explained.

What does This Part of the Exam Look Like?
 

Sample Passage A and Multiple-Choice Questions

Passage A

Literary Text
It was eleven o’clock that night when Mr. Pontellier returned from Klein’s hotel. He was in an excellent humor, in high spirits, and very talkative. His entrance awoke his wife, who was in bed and fast asleep when he came in. He talked to her while he undressed, telling her anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that he had gathered during the day. From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank notes and a good deal of silver coin, which he piled on the bureau indiscriminately with keys, knife, handkerchief, and whatever else happened to be in his pockets. She was overcome with sleep, and answered him with little half utterances.
     He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced1 so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation.
Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts for the boys. Notwithstanding he loved them very much, and went into the adjoining room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure that they were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.
Mr. Pontellier returned to his wife with information that Raoul had a high fever and needed looking after. Then he lit a cigar and went and sat near the open door to smoke it.
Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure Raoul had no fever. He had gone to bed perfectly well, she said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr. Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever symptoms to be mistaken. He assured her the child was consuming2 at that moment in the next room.
He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befell them. He talked in a monotonous, insistent way.
Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went into the next room. She soon came back and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning her head down on the pillow. She said nothing, and refused to answer her husband when he questioned her. When his cigar was smoked out he went to bed, and in half a minute he was fast asleep.
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir.3 Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro. It was then past midnight. The cottages were all dark. A single faint light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour. It broke like a mournful lullaby upon the night.
The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. She was holding the back of her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had slipped almost to the shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning, she thrust her face, steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life.
They seemed never before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit4 and self-understood.
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding5 her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself. The mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps.
     The little stinging, buzzing imps succeeded in dispelling a mood which might have held her there in the darkness half a night longer.
The following morning Mr. Pontellier was up in good time to take the rockaway which was to convey him to the steamer at the wharf. He was returning to the city to his business, and they would not see him again at the Island till the coming Saturday. He had regained his composure, which seemed to have been somewhat impaired the night before. He was eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively week in Carondelet Street.
Mr. Pontellier gave his wife half of the money which he had brought away from Klein’s hotel the evening before. She liked money as well as most women, and accepted it with no little satisfaction. . . .
A few days later a box arrived for Mrs. Pontellier from New Orleans. It was from her husband. It was filled with friandises,6 with luscious and toothsome7 bits—the finest of fruits, pates, a rare bottle or two, delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance.
     Mrs. Pontellier was always very generous with the contents of such a box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The pates and fruit were brought to the dining-room; the bonbons were passed around. And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better.
—Kate Chopin, excerpted from The Awakening, 1899

Multiple-Choice Questions

The primary purpose of the first paragraph is to
- create a metaphor
- foreshadow an event
- establish a contrast
- present a flashback

Placed in the context of the rest of the text, Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier’s disagreement about Raoul’s fever (lines 19–31) reflects
- Mrs. Pontellier’s resentment of her husband’s night out
- Mr. Pontellier’s belief in his authority over his wife
- Mrs. Pontellier’s need for her husband’s approval
- Mr. Pontellier’s concern for his wife’s well-being

In lines 26–31, the author presents Mr. Pontellier as a man who feels
- defeated
- anxious
- distracted
- arrogant

The author’s choice of language in lines 38–46 serves to emphasize Mrs. Pontellier’s sense of
- isolation
- boredom
- disbelief
- inferiority

One major effect of the simile used in lines 45–46 is to emphasize Mrs. Pontellier’s
- anger
- distress
- defiance
- exhaustion

Lines 52–56 demonstrate Mrs. Pontellier’s desire to
- protect her reputation
- question her situation
- abandon her dreams
- disguise her sorrow

Lines 73–79 contradict a central idea in the text by describing Mr. Pontellier’s
- generosity
- honesty
- sympathy
- humility

Based on events in the text, which quotation best reveals the irony of the statement that Mr. Pontellier’s wife “was the sole object of his existence” (lines 10–11)?
- “From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank notes” (lines 5–6)
- “Then he lit a cigar and went and sat near the open door to smoke it” (lines 20–21)
- “He assured her the child was consuming at that moment in the next room” (lines 24–25)
- “He was eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively week in Carondelet Street” (lines 71–72)

Answers
- 3
- 2
- 4
- 1
- 2
- 2
- 1
- 4


Looking at the Questions

The primary purpose of the first paragraph…
This question asks you to analyze the introduction of characters, their interaction and its significance to the development of plot and theme.

Placed in the context, lines 19–31 reflect…
This question asks you to understand how the interaction of the two characters develops over the course of the text.

The author presents Mr. Pontellier as a man…
This question requires further analysis of how characters are introduced and developed.

The author’s choice of language… serves to emphasize
Here you must determine the meaning of words and phrases in context and the role of word choice in the passage.

One major effect of the simile…
Here you should sense in the metaphor the feelings of both calm and sorrow in the character.

Lines 52–56 demonstrate…
This question asks for analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as what can be inferred about the character’s feelings.

Lines 73–79 contradict…
Here you are asked to determine a central idea and understand its development over the course of the text.

Which quotation best reveals the irony…
Here you are expected to recognize the incongruity between what the character says he feels and what he is actually looking forward to.

- Sample Passage B Poem

View with a Grain of Sand
We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it it’s no different than falling on anything else
with no assurance that it’s finished falling
or that it’s falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.
The lake’s floor exists floorlessly
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.

A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The character’s invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.
—Wislawa Szymborska from Polish Poetry of the Last Two Decades of Communist Rule (English translation)

Multiple-Choice Questions
The statement “Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it” (line 7) helps to establish the concept of
- human resentment of the natural order
- nature’s superiority
- human control over the environment
- nature’s indifference

The purpose of lines 14 through 18 is to present
- a contrast with human reliance on the senses
- a focus on the complexity of natural events
- an emphasis on human need for physical beauty
- an appreciation for the role of nature in everyday life

Lines 30 through 33 contribute to the poem’s meaning by
- questioning the finality of death
- commenting on human perception
- revealing the power of anticipation
- describing an unusual phenomenon

The inclusion of the figurative language in the final stanza serves to
- modify an argument
- stress a value
- reinforce a central idea
- resolve a conflict

The poem is developed primarily through the use of
- examples
- exaggerations
- cause and effect
- question and answer

Answers
- 4
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 1


Looking at the Questions

The statement… helps to establish the concept of
Reading the entire poem before answering the question helps you to recognize the central theme of the poem in this statement.

The purpose of lines 14 through 18 is to present…
Here you are expected to see how specific details and imagery contribute to the development of the central theme.

Lines 30 through 33 contribute to the poem’s meaning by…
This question asks you to identify the tone of the passage and to hear the last line of the stanza as a comment on how humans perceive time.

The inclusion of figurative language in the final stanza serves to…
Here you are expected to see how figurative language contributes to the meaning of a poem. In this case, the poet concludes with images of human perception of time as only a simile.

The poem is developed primarily through the use of…
This question asks you to recognize in the sequence of stanzas the overall structure of the poem as a series of examples.
 

- Sample Passage C - Informational Text

In this excerpt, Andrew Carnegie presents his philosophy regarding how the excess wealth of the rich should be used. Carnegie himself had risen from being an impoverished immigrant to one of the most successful industrialists of the 19th century.

The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary1 change in public opinion. The State of Pennsylvania now takes—subject to some exceptions—one-tenth of the property left by its citizens. The budget presented inthe British Parliament the other day proposes to increase the death-duties; and, most significant of all, the new tax is to be a graduated one. Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work goodto the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form ofthe state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life. . . .
This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have in view, as being that by far most fruitful for the people.
Nor need it be feared that this policy would sap the root of enterprise and render men less anxious to accumulate, for to the class whose ambition it is to leave great fortunes and be talked about after their death, it will attract even more attention, and, indeed, be a somewhat nobler ambition to have enormous sums paid over to the state from their fortunes.
There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor—a reign of harmony—another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization.
It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is prepared to put it in practice by degrees whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts. . . .
Poor and restricted are our opportunities in this life; narrow our horizon; our best work most imperfect; but rich men should be thankful for one inestimable boon.2 They have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignify their own lives. The highest life is probably to be reached, not by such imitation of the life of Christ as Count Tolstoi gives us, but, while animated by Christ’s spirit, by recognizing the changed conditions of this age, and adopting modes of expressing this spirit suitable to the changed conditions under which we live; still laboring for the good of our fellows, which was the essence of his life and teaching, but laboring in a different manner.
This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious3 living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community— the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. . . .
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. The best minds will thus have reached a stage in the development of the race in which it is clearly seen that there is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men into whose hands it flows save by using it year by year for the general good. This day already dawns. But a little while, and although, without incurring the pity of their fellows, men may die sharers in great business enterprises from which their capital cannot be or has not been withdrawn, and is left chiefly at death for public uses, yet the man who dies leaving behind many millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away “unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” no matter to what uses he leaves the dross4 which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring “Peace on earth, among men Good-Will.”
—Andrew Carnegie
excerpted from “Wealth,” 1889

Multiple Choice Questions:

The first paragraph (lines 1–12) serves the author’s purpose by
- providing examples of alternative tax policies
- contrasting the current taxation system with his proposal
- comparing equal taxation with graduated taxation
- distinguishing estate taxes from income taxes

The expression “sap the root of enterprise” (line 16) refers to the
- decline in consumer confidence
- reduction in government funding
- discouragement of private business
- harm to international trade

What evidence from the text best clarifies the author’s claim in lines 33–37 (“Even the poorest … amounts”)?
- lines 38–40 (“Poor and restricted … inestimable boon”)
- lines 49–50 (“This, then, … or extravagance”)
- lines 60–61 (“The laws … distribution free”)
- lines 61–65 (“Individualism … for itself”)

The author’s tone in lines 49–59 can best be described as
- confident
- indifferent
- humble
- sarcastic

A central idea in the text advocates that the wealthy should
- be rewarded for their generosity to the public
- contribute to the public during their lifetime
- entrust their estates to charitable institutions
- be focused on increasing their institutional worth

Which statement best reflects a central argument used by the author?
- There is no way to insure fair distribution of earnings.
- People should only be paid what they actually earn.
- Sharing wealth among all would limit large gifts from benefactors.
- Equaling wealth among all would restrict the national tax base.

Answers
- 1
- 3
- 4
- 1
- 2
- 3

Looking at the Questions

The first paragraph (lines 1–12) serves the author’s purpose by…
This question asks you to analyze how an author’s ideas are developed in a particular paragraph and to recognize how an author effectively structures an argument.

The expression “sap the root of enterprise” (line 16) refers to the…
Here you must recognize the use of figurative language and how it expresses a central claim of the argument.

What evidence from the text best clarifies the author’s claim in lines 33–37… ?
This question requires analysis of a complex set of ideas and how they develop over the course of the text.

The author’s tone in lines 49–59 can best be described as…
Here you must recognize tone as it is determined in the connotation of words and phrases.

A central idea in the text advocates that the wealthy should…
Determining the central idea of a text is a fundamental skill in the learning standards.

Which statement best reflects a central argument used by the author?
This question complements the one above because it asks you to identifythe author’s central argument of the passage as it is developed over the course of the text.
 

Summary: The questions in Part 1 of the exam are primarily about:
- identifying themes and central ideas and analyzing their development
- recognizing the significance of tone and point of view
- describing the author’s use of structure, rhetorical and literary elements
- determining the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text
- understanding figurative language, connotation, and nuances in word meanings